


The Well and the Lighthouse

by DarthNickels



Series: The Good Doctor [1]
Category: Star Wars (Marvel Comics), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Darth Vader Lives, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Post ROTJ AU, Psychological Trauma, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 19:38:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16290497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthNickels/pseuds/DarthNickels
Summary: The war is over, and the good guys won. For the bad guys who find themselves still alive, there's strength in numbers.[Prequel to 'Holiday Special'. Vader lives, Aphra has scores to settle.]





	1. Resurrected

               Vader’s room was dimly-lit, with only a few faint spears of light making their way past the tightly-drawn shutters. There was an unnatural stillness in the gloom—quiet like dust on dry bones. If she didn’t have very good intel on her target’s location, she would have assumed she’d hit a dead end. But Vader was here—she saw him silhouetted in the gloom, the mangled back of his head visible over the back of his armchair.

               “Dr. Aphra.”

               She started at his voice—she should have known there was a vocoder doing the heavy lifting for Vader’s infamous growl.  Even so, she couldn’t have anticipated hearing him sound like that—thin and raspy and _old_.

               “I wondered when you would make an appearance.”

               “You didn’t already know?” she raised her blaster, leveling it on the back of his head. “The Force doesn’t do you much good these days, huh?”

               He didn’t deign to answer.

               “You will never kill me like that,” he said, without turning to look. Aphra took another step forward, aiming for the craterous wound on his scalp.

               “Oh yeah?”

               Vader gestured, still without turning to look at her, and the blaster was torn from her hands. It flew across the room, landing against Vader’s waiting hand with a harsh _slap_.

               “Not when your blaster is set to stun.”

               He put his thumb on the switch, flicked it downwards, and set it on the end table next to him. Aphra paused, confused.

               Down was _kill_.

               “You do not have all day,” Vader groused. He turned, looking at her for the first time—it wasn’t polite to stare, but Aphra did. He had cataract-milky eyes and hard lines across his forehead—lines everywhere, at the corner of his eyes, radiating down his cheeks.

               Of course he did, he must be _ancient_ , but—wow.

               “Doctor,” Vader said, impatient, “do what you came here to do.”

               “Are you asking me to _shoot_ you?”

               “It’s hardly an imposition,” Vader said, with a kind of total sincerity that was jarring and disconcerting and distressingly, absurdly funny: “You were already planning to.”

               “Yeah, but—”

               “Coward,” Vader cut her off.

               Coward? _COWARD_?

               “Oh, I don’t think so,” Aphra said, folding her arms across her chest. “Not when you have me doing your dirty work _again_.”

               “You are wasting time being _impudent_ —”

               “Here!” Aphra walked to the end table and picked up her blaster. She thrust it in Vader’s face, presenting it grip-first. “You wanna off yourself? Go ahead.”

               Vader looked down at the proffered blaster, lip curled in distaste, and said nothing.

               “Go on!” she said, shoving it in his face. “Pop one right in the brain!” He glared up at her, hatefully, then looked away.

               “I’m not the coward here,” Aphra said, pointedly. Vader snapped back to her, his eyes blazing.

               Beneath the scarring, his eyes were blue. She wouldn’t have guessed.

               “I _can’t_ ,” he seethed. “Luke would _know_. It has to look like—” He stopped short, turning to the door. Aphra heard the tell-tale scrambling that meant the cavalry had arrived.

               “We’re not finished,” she said, walking backwards to the window. “You and me, we have things to settle.”

               “You’re leaving?” Vader said, in disbelief.

               “Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “ _Somebody_ called the cops on me.”

               “Tell me what you want from me,” Vader demanded, “if not my death.”

               Aphra raised an eyebrow. “Don’t have to,” she said. “You’re not my boss anymore.”

               She didn’t have the time to enjoy Vader’s look of furious disbelief. She slammed a detonator against the window, blowing the glass outwards. With a tap of her thumbs against her palm, she activated the cling function on her gloves, ready to grab the exterior of the apartment.

               She turned back to survey the damage—destroying the window allowed sunlight to stream into the apartment, uninhibited by the darkly tinted glass or tightly-drawn shutters. It wasn’t nearly as gloomy—and Vader, blinking pathetically in the brightness, looked even more sad and frail.

               She flicked a quick two-finger salute. “Later Vader!”

               “Aphra--!” Vader’s call followed her out the window, where she felt less than half a story before grabbing a nearby lintel and hanging on. Her personal cloaking came on like a charm, hiding her from any would-be pursuers. She huddled under the window, taking a moment to savor the sounds of chaos inside.

               “Somebody tell me what the hell just happened here!” even Aphra, wanted fugitive living on the fringes of society, could recognize the voice of the Last Princess of Alderaan—barking orders, as usual.  Someone—the soon-to-be-fired chief of security, if Aphra had to guess—was speaking very rapidly in low, reassuring tones.

               “Excuses later! I want this quadrant locked down, do you understand?” the string of demands seemed to move further towards the door, when Leia paused.

               “Did you see _anything_ useful?” she demanded.

               “I couldn’t say,” that was Vader, testy as ever.

               “Can’t or won’t?”

               Only silence in response. Aphra heard—or thought she heard, because surely not—Leia mutter “ _pathetic_ ”, under her breath, before stomping out of the room.

               “Father,” that voice was softer, sadder—the heir to the Jedi Order, Luke Skywalker. “Did you even _try_ to defend yourself?”

               “I thought such actions were expressly forbidden under the terms of my amnesty,” Vader snarled. He said ‘amnesty’ as though he meant ‘life sentence’.

               “Please don’t be like this,” Luke asked, heartbroken.

               Aphra didn’t stay to hear Vader’s response. She’d heard more than enough. She started her slow, precarious climb down the expensive Republica-block apartments, not even pausing to peek in the windows for anything sparkly and portable.

               She had a lot on her mind.

* * *

 

               Here’s how it played out:

               Luke Skywalker surrenders himself to Darth Vader on the Endor moon. He goes up in the shuttle to the Death Star II, which is still under-construction except for the business end, which is secretly Fully Operational. He’s immediately killed for the crime of being sweetly naïve, the Rebellion is crushed, and at the Emperor reigns supreme.

               Except, somehow, that’s _not_ how it happened.

               It’s like this: Luke Skywalker faces down Darth Vader and the Emperor, slices them up with his laser sword, single-handedly mops up the demoralized Imperial Guards and destroys the entire navy with his bare hands.

               Except that’s _also_ not what happened.

               It took weeks for the right story to filter down to where Aphra had been laying low on Nar Shaada—Luke Skywalker, gentle and trusting and so, _so_ stupid, turns himself in to his long-lost biological father (!), Darth Vader (!!!). After a muddled series of events, _Vader_ kills the Emperor, and himself dies both tragic and heroic.

               Except, despite the earnest New Republic news broadcasts, that’s not quite what happened, either.

                Here’s the truth, the grimy bottom Aphra had clawed her way down to over the course of nearly a year: mortally wounded by his suicide attack on the Emperor, Vader lay dying in his son’s arm. He begs Luke to leave him there, to escape on his own, to tell his own kids only good things about their genocidal grandpa. These are his last wishes. He will not survive.

               Except, somehow, he _does_.

               Vader, Aphra learned after slicing deeply into the New Republic’s most secret files, lay in a coma for the better part of eight months. It seemed increasingly unlikely that he would ever wake up, and everyone with sense was praying he didn’t. Everyone, from doctors to dignitaries to Princess Leia herself pleaded with Skywalker to let them pull the plug on his father and stop the drain of resources it took to keep the rebellion’s most hated enemy alive.

               Luke refused, and for a second time his faith in his father was rewarded.

               So Vader wakes up, there’s about a thousand holocalls made over the course of a two-hour period, at least three threats of secession from the New Republic if Vader is allowed to return to public life and one pledge of fealty to Neo-Emperor Vader, and an shameless number of grad students clamoring to study his miraculous recovery—

               And then, nothing. The trail went cold.

               And wasn’t that interesting?

               What was missing from the story was Aphra herself—the long hours she’d spent waiting in dingy bars for contacts who’d never showed, the amount of favors burned on the search for an answer, the sleepless nights spent staring at the ceiling of her bunk as she asked herself the million-credit question:

               Why did she even care?

               Revenge seemed like as good a reason as any. She’d done her job with only a minimal amount of backstabbing, and been subjected to an attempt at execution in the _one way_ she’d asked not to be killed.

               Yeah, revenge _sounded_ good. But that wasn’t quite it.

               She loaded up a datadisc of stolen information—breaking into the facility to download it had been honestly too easy. She should leave Skywalker a note, a courtesy-ticket on how useless his current employees were. She could have been in and out of there and no one would ever have known…

               But curiosity got the better of her—and that’s what this was really about, wasn’t it? If she’d wanted to kill Vader, there was absolutely no reason to break into his room and gawk at him, exchange one-liners, and bounce—she could have just done it. There was no reason for any of this.

               ‘Knowledge for its own sake’ was a goal Aphra’s professors had shed tears and very literal blood trying to teach her—‘for its own sake’ as opposed to say, how much it be sold to certain black-market information brokers for. In her defense, that was pretty lucrative.

               But it wasn’t credits she was after now. It was answers, and like all grad students her first step would be raiding the archives for information.

               That the raiding was more literal than figurative in her case just added to the challenge. 

* * *

 

               “He’s getting worse.”

               Luke looked up from his datapad to where his sister stood, illuminated in the doorway. She continued, without preamble: “he’s not going to recover. It can’t go on like this.”

               “Hello to you too,” he said, irritably. “Will you at least sit down?”

               “I won’t be here that long,” Leia said, leaning against the door. “And I’m tired of having this fight.”

               That made two of them, but Luke look took a long breath instead of saying so. “I won’t give up on him.”

               “Of course you wouldn’t,” Leia, to her credit, looked genuinely grieved. “But Luke—please understand. _Anakin_ has given up on _himself_. He won’t try—not even for you—”

               “It’s not like that—” Leia held up her hand, wearily.

               “Have you watched the tape?” she asked.

               “What?”

               “The security holo, from the intruder. Have you watched it?”

               Luke had a sinking feeling in his gut, something even deeper than the Force. “No…”

               Leia walked over to his desk and laid the datachip down, gently, in the middle of his papers.

               “I’m sorry,” was all she said, before turning stiffly and walking out the door.

               A long time ago, on a planet far, far away from the center of the Galaxy, a little boy looked up at the setting suns and dreamed about running away to be with his father. Surely his father would have wanted him, wanted to know him, wanted to be with him…

               Now, waiting outside the door to Anakin’s suite, Luke wasn’t so sure.

               “He’s resting,” one of the attendants told him as he signed in. She looked up at him, and offered an uncertain smile. “I’m sure he’ll be happy you dropped by…”

               Luke returned her smile, patiently, but he doubted it—and that doubt ate at them.

               Now he stood outside the door to his father’s suite—the facility was a small, clandestine project of the New Republic, where prisoners from the highest ranks of the Empire could be held in their advanced age with more humanity than they had ever shown their victims. Thus far, the facility had only one occupant—every Moff or Governor on the verge of capture had elected to space himself rather than face justice of the mob. This had suited Leia just fine, although she thought a trial and sentencing would bring more closure—but her victory would have to be her vengeance. She regularly told Luke with dark humor that she was grateful to the Imp brass for saving the Republic the enormous expense of their housing.

 _If they could all just put a blaster to their temple, it would save me a lot of headaches,_ she said, glibly.

               Luke’s heart ached as he wondered if their father had overheard…

               He pushed the door open, calling “Father?” into the gloom. The repairs to the window would be delayed until they could get a contractor of sufficient discretion, and in the meantime it had been boarded over, leaving the room in darkness. “Would you like me to turn on the lights?”

               No answer. Luke tapped the controls, bathing the room in artificially-warm light. His father sat in the chair—the same chair he’d been sitting in when—

               “You haven’t moved,” Luke said, his voice thick with grief. “Have you gotten up from that chair since the break-in? Since someone tried to _kill_ you?” He threw the datachip down, letting it land with a small, almost imperceptible puff of dust:

               “Since you almost _let_ —?” his throat closed with anguish, and he can’t even finish the accusation.

               “I—” his father said, his voice wavering. “I didn’t—” he looked up at Luke, and something in his expression hardened.

               “I had not realized you were spying on me,” he gritted out. Luke’s resolve snapped.

               “Of course we are!” he shouted. He couldn’t remember the last time he had raised his voice to his father—maybe Bespin. “We _have_ to or you’ll _hurt_ _yourself_!”

               His father didn’t say anything to that. He couldn’t meet Luke’s eyes.

               “Is it me?” Luke asked, his voice high and desperate. “Am I doing something that makes you—?”

               “No,” Anakin cut him off, harshly. “It’s not—no. Never you, my son.”

               “Then why are you doing this?”

               There was silence in the room for a long, long time. The minutes crawled by as Luke stared down his father, ready to wait him out. Finally, Anakin seemed to realize his son would not leave without an answer—and that Luke would know if he was lying.

               “It doesn’t matter what happens to me,” Anakin finally admitted, bitterly.

               “Of course it does! It matters to me!” Luke took two long strides to his father’s chair and knelt, taking Anakin’s skeletal prosthetic hand in his own. “Please tell me how to help you. Please tell me what you need to get better.”

               After a long moment, Anakin wrapped his free hand around Luke’s. “My son,” he rasped. “You should concern yourself with other things.”

               “I won’t—”

               “I told you,” Anakin went on, quietly, “that it was too late for me…”

               “And you were wrong. You fought back—”

               Anakin shook his head. “The war is over,” he said. “I—should have been allowed to go with it.”

               “I _saved_ you,” Luke said, his voice thick with tears, “because I _love_ you and—”

               Anakin squeezed Luke’s hand. “My, son,” he rasped, “you should prioritize other things.”

               “You’re my father! You’re _family_! You’re going to be my first priority—!”

               “No,” Anakin said. He sounded tired. “Please—go.”

               “What?”

               “Go,” Anakin repeated, impatiently. “I don’t want you to be here.”

               “Father—”

               “You have a life,” his father said, “you should live it. Do not spend your youth standing over me, watching me die.”

               “You won’t die—"

               “We all die,” Anakin snapped, “and it is a _blessing_ , the very last mercy afforded to even the most unworthy. Now _go_. Leave. Do not come back here.”

               “Don’t say that,” Luke pleaded. “Talk to me, please—”

               But Anakin turned his face to the wall, and stonily refused to acknowledge Luke’s existence. Luke knelt and begged, a gentle hand resting on his father’s knee, but his tears didn’t move him. It took nearly an hour, long after Luke’s pleas gave way to beaten silence, before he stood.

               “I will never give up on you,” Luke vowed, his voice hoarse. “I promise you. I won’t.”

               But Anakin said nothing. He didn’t turn his head, even after the door slid shut behind his son.

               Detecting no motion in the room, the lights went off automatically. Anakin sat in the dark, not sleeping, only drifting.

* * *

 

               The next day, Leia found Luke pouring over his datapad. He sat on the couch with his knees drawn up nearly to his chest, and the light of the screen seemed to carve dark lines across his face.

               Or maybe that was just a side effect of talking with his father.

               “Please,” Luke said, without looking up. “Can it wait?”

               “No,” Leia said, simply. She walked over and took a seat on the couch across from him, waiting. He ignored her for a long moment, before sighing and putting his datapad away.

               “I felt you,” Leia said, without preamble. She leaned over, gently touching her fingertips to Luke’s chest, just over his heart. “Here. You were hurting.”

               Luke’s face broke into a smile, joyful and sad and so heartfelt it threatened to crack his face in half. “Your powers grow every day. I knew they would.”

               “We’re not talking about me,” Leia said, waving her hand. “What happened?”

               Luke shook his head. He took a long moment to collect his thoughts. “You—were right. He’s not getting better. I—I don’t know how to make it better.”

               “Luke…” against her better judgement, her heart broke for him. Luke loved a monster—Vader would never be worthy of that love. He would always turn around and bite the hand that reached for him—just like he had with the Jedi, just like he had with Palpatine. Luke brought this pain on himself.

               Or so she told herself—but somehow, when it came to her brother, all of her logic and good sense was rendered powerless.

               “I know how you feel about him,” Luke said, wearily—sometimes their bond was a burden to them both. “I know, and I can’t—I can’t have this conversation right now—”

               “I didn’t come here to talk about him,” Leia said, truthfully. “I’m worried about you.”

               Luke gave her a small, watery smile. “I’m fine. I’m—” he stopped short, trying to find the words that would reassure her—

               “I’m fine,” he repeated, apparently coming up short.

               “You’re a terrible liar, Jedi,” Leia told him, flatly. That, at least, earned her another weak smile. “Listen, all I want is for you to be well. Whatever—whatever differences of opinion we have, I always want that.”

               “I know,” Luke said. He reached over and have her hand a squeeze. Leia cautiously opened her senses, hoping Luke could feel some of her affection across their bond.

               “I did come here with an ulterior motive,” she said, after a long moment.

               “Of course you did, Madame Senator.”

               “Stop,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We have an ID on the intruder.”

               Luke sat upright, tossing his datapad to the side. “What do we know?”

               “More like who do we know,” Leia said, grimly handing him a datapad of her own. Luke’s blue eyes went wide with genuine surprise.

               “Dr. Aphra? The one who—”

               “The very same,” Leia cut him off, grimly.  Luke scrolled through the file, his forehead wrinkling.

               “But she used to work for him—”

               “I hate to break it to you, that there are many, many of Darth Vader’s staff now want him dead. Some of them were even plotting his death well before the treason.”

               Luke snorted. “I’m not sure _you_ of all people can judge him for _treason_ —”

               “That being said,” Leia cut him off yet again, “it doesn’t look like she’s in the employ of anyone else—as far as we know she hasn’t taken a job in months. She’s on her own time, burning her own resources—this is a personal project for her.”

               Luke’s mouth turned down in a grim line. “Do we know why?”

               “It’s not hard to imagine wanting to kill him,” Leia sniped, “but we don’t have a concrete motive. Revenge seems likely; the rumor is her time freelancing for him ended on a sour note.”

               “He tried to kill her,” Luke said, grimacing.

               “She should have known that was a possibility,” Leia offered, shrugging. It was the closest she would ever get to defending Vader. “Always ends the same way with him. But this time, he didn't finish the job—which is unusual, he has a consistent track record when it comes to—”

               “Leia. Please.”

               She sighed. “Unfortunately, we know very little about her current resources or capabilities. We know very little about her at all. Since she was able to break into a facility that shouldn’t even exist, I was able to pull for more resources—” Leia’s commlink chimed urgently, and she picked it up—

               --and slammed it back in her pocket, swearing. “Like that. It’s her—”

               “What? She’s back already?”

               “She’s with him right now.”

               Luke raised his hand, and his lightsaber flew across the room. “Let’s go.”


	2. Living In A Lighthouse

“So, what? You just sit now? That’s all you do?”

               Vader sat with his face in his hand, metal palm covering his eyes. “Either kill me or leave.”

               “Nope!” Aphra rebutted, cheerily. “You were hard to find. Dropped a big chunk of change to get here—now I gotta get my money’s worth.”

               “You are fortunate, indeed,” Vader rumbled. “Many would like to come and gawk.” He moved his hand, looking straight up into her eyes:

               “More would take the shot.”

               Aphra shrugged. “I’m contrary like that.”

               Vader huffed. “Even now, you are incapable of following orders.”

               “I’m self-employed.”

               “You only ever had your own interests at heart.”

               “I’m not sure I have to take that from the right-hand man of a dictator. Who is, for related reasons, currently sitting in New Republic time-out—”

               “Then leave,” Vader snapped.

               Aphra didn’t. She walked into the kitchenette and grabbed a chair, pulling it across the floor until it sat in front of Vader’s armchair throne. She flipped it around, backwards, and straddled the chair, leaning against the back.

               “You have a kid,” she said, simply.

               “Yes.”

               “ _Two_ kids. Twins.”

               Vader didn’t respond to that.

               “Did you know?”

               “Know what?”

               “When you sent me chasing after Skywalker—did you know he was your son?”

               Vader stared at her, balefully. “What is it worth to _you_?”

               “I asked first.”

               “Yes,” he snapped. “Yes, now go _away_ —"

               “So is he the favorite? Or, what, you just prefer boys? You never sent me to pick up the girl—”

               Vader’s face seemed to crumple. That told Aphra all she needed to know.

               “You _didn’t_ know about her. Huh. Separated at birth, just like the stories. What about Mom? Is she still in hiding, or—”

               Ah, there they were—familiar invisible fingers closed around Aphra’s neck—but they seemed to have lost some of their grip, never quite tightening enough to close her airway. After a long moment, the pressure vanished from her throat, and Vader slumped forward, panting.

               “Wow,” she said. “that was _pathetic_.”

               “Leave me alone,” he gasped, “just—leave—”

               “What’s _up_ with that? Did you run out of juice?”

               “Shut up—shut up—”

               “—I mean I have a lot more questions about the missus—”

               Vader swung at her—a wild, misaimed backhand—but she easily danced out of the way. “C’mon. You gotta get up to get me.”

               “You have a deathwish,” he growled.

               “You _literally_ asked me to kill you—”

               “—and for some perverse reason you refuse—”

               “Of course I refuse!” Aphra shouted. Something about his pity-party cracked her breezy, devil-may-care exterior, revealing her secret inner devil-does-care interior. “Look at you! You’re _Darth Vader_! The iron fist of the Empire! The bane of the Jedi! The—”

               “I’m not,” Vader said, wearily.

               “Not what?”

               “Not…Vader.”

               Aphra raised an eyebrow. “Another name change, Mr. Skywalker?”

               “No. I’m not him. I’m—” he slumped back, and his eyes looked far away.

               “I am…nothing.”

               “So what? You lose one 20-year galactic civil war and just—throw in the towel? Pitch a fit? Sulk? Like a big—”

               Aphra stopped short. Vader was making a strange wheezing noise—huh-huh, huh-huh. Like laughter, but somehow it conveyed the opposite of humor.

               “I’m already dead,” he said, in between rattling wheezes. “I’m already dead, and you—you are a new punishment. What I’ve _lost!_ ” The wheezing gave way to wracking coughs.

               Aphra raised an eyebrow. “So, did she leave you and take the kids because you’re a sore loser, or—”

               Those were the magic words. Vader surged out of his chair, knocking Aphra to the ground—and going down with her. She scrambled, rolling to avoid his flailing grasp. She scooted backwards until she hit a wall, using it to leverage herself up. Vader leaned heavily on the back of a sofa, breathing hard. He struggled to pull himself to his feet, and attempted to take a few, shambling steps towards her—but his legs buckled and he fell back against the cushions.

               “What _happened_ to you?”

               Vader didn’t answer. He stared at her with murderous intent.

               “Don’t say coma,” Aphra admonished. “I’ve got your files. You bounced back from worse.” She took a cautious step towards him.

               “All the comments on your records are the same, did you know that? ‘Survival seems powered by sheer will’, ‘patient kept alive but only his desire to continue’, and so on, and so on. So what happened? You just out of willpower? You gave up?”

               The rigid tension in Vader’s posture eased. He leaned heavily against the sofa, closing his eyes.

               “Yes,” he said, simply. “Yes.”

               “Well, then you can understand my confusion,” Aphra said. “Because the Darth Vader I knew absolutely wouldn’t surrender for all the—”

               She didn’t even get the chance to deploy her colorful metaphor. Say what you will of the Skywalker twins, but they learn from their mistakes. They’d cleverly beaten her sentries, and now the Princess of Alderaan was sitting on her back, wrapping her arm around Aphra’s neck in a very, very inescapable headlock.

               “Is— _everyone_ —a Jedi—now?” Aphra gasped.

               “Leia is advancing in her studies at an astonishing rate,” Luke Skywalker assured her. “And Father! You’re up!”

               “Don’t patronize me,” Vader murmured, as he accepted Luke’s offered shoulder and leaned heavily against it.

               “Did you see how well Leia—”

               “Luke, not now,” Leia cut him off. “Doctor Aphra, as a member of the New Republic governing council, I am placing you under arrest…”

               Aphra only half-listened as Leia rattled off the charges—governments change, but getting arrested is the same wherever you go. Instead, she watched Luke help his father limp back to his chair, one slow step at a time—saw him turn to glance back at her, watching her watching him—

               She thought she saw the gears turning in his head.

* * *

 

               Leia escorted Dr. Aphra away in cuffs, flanked by a pair of armed guards. Luke lingered at his father’s side, saying nothing.

               Anakin broke the silence: “You came to my rescue once again.”

               Luke rested his hand against his father’s. “I always will.”

               “Aphra poses a greater danger to you than to me,” Anakin warned. “Thus far, she seems content to try and annoy me to death. Little does she know my capacity for foolishness has grown boundless in my time here.”

               Luke’s mouth turned down, but before he could say anything his father reached up, to put a hand on his shoulder. “I wish you had a more worthy cause than my well-being. You deserve better.”

               Luke recognized his father’s apology for what it was. “I’m very content with the father I have,” he replied.

               “You indulge me at your peril,” Anakin warned him. “A Jedi wastes no time with attachment to useless, broken things.”

               “You’re not broken—”

               “I am old and worn beyond use,” he interrupted, “anyone but you would have consigned me to the scrap-heap.”

               “You’re not a droid,” Luke said, patiently. “Our worth doesn’t come from utility.”

               “My _utility_ is the coin that paid for all of this,” Anakin said, gesturing around the room. “It is the expected repayment for the investment in my continued existence. It is how your sister proposed I settle my debts to the Galaxy.”

               “Leia is willing to give you the chance to make things right,” Luke said. “We talked for a long, long time before we came to the agreement.”

               “Let the buyer beware,” Anakin replied, snidely.

               Luke said quietly, picking his words carefully: “You must think I’m very selfish, then.”

               Anakin looked at him sharply: “Never.”

               “I think you do,” Luke replied, “if you truly believe I fought for your life because of what you can do.”

               “That is not—”

               “Did you spend three years chasing me across the Galaxy because of my potential?” Luke asked, measured. “Was it my _ability_ that started your hunt?”

               “Ridiculous—of course not—”

               “Then believe me,” Luke begged. “ _Believe_ me when I say we just want to see you be well.”

               “And then what?”

               His father looked…weary. It stirred something in Luke’s mind—the worn out faces of the laborers on Tatooine, ancient wizened farmhands who would die standing over a vaporator—or be left to starve when they couldn’t drag themselves to work. On Tatooine, being worthless was a death sentence.

               But something valuable would be put to use for a lifetime…

               Luke wrapped his hands around his father’s, feeling the slight chill of the durasteel, hoping to impart some warmth. “I want you to make that decision for yourself.”

               Anakin didn’t say anything for a long time—he looked downward, lost in thought. “I may never be what I once was,” he said, slowly. “I cannot give you what you deserve—much less repay my debt to you—”

               “There’s no debt—”

               “There is,” his father said, forcefully. “For—what you did for me. The wrong I have done to you. You won’t be free from the burden of my keeping—the burden of our relation—until I finally die—”

               “Father—”

                Anakin gave Luke a long, measuring look.

               “Perhaps,” he started, as if weighing his words carefully. “Perhaps, while death seems so long in coming, I can alleviate the burden of my care in other ways.”

               “Oh?” Luke asked, not daring to hope.

               “It is a waste of your time, to constantly be chasing after Dr. Aphra,” Anakin went on. “Perhaps—I could play a role in ridding you of her nuisance.” He sat back in his chair, a spark of life in his eyes:

               “Bring your doctors. I’ll wrap my hands around her neck before the month is finished.”

* * *

 

               It’s Leia herself who carries out the interrogation. Aphra’s impressed.

               “All those New Republic titles, and you still get your hands dirty doing grunt work,” she said, propping her chin on her cuffed hands. “I like that. Hands-on. Guess you can’t let that royalty stuff get to your head.”

               “You think you’re clever, don’t you?” Leia cut her off, shuffling a few sheets of flimsiplast.

               “I have a PhD. They don’t just give those out.”

               “You cheated.”

               “Can you believe I was the only one smart enough to think of that? Everyone else was just slaving away like a bunch of suckers—”

               “Doctor Aphra,” Leia went on, as though she hadn’t heard, “I just want you to know that the Emergency Powers Act is still very much in effect. You are currently being held on multiple charges, but the one you should be concerned with is—” here Leia theatrically scanned her documents, pausing for effect: “ 'providing aid to a known agent of the Galactic Empire'—”

               “Oh, bullshit, I didn’t give him _anything_ —”

               “—you will be allowed to speak when you have your day in court,” Leia said, breezily, “But I’ll tip my hand, give you some inside information—the evidence looks very, very bad for you.”

               “Usually the case,” Aphra admitted.

               “A known agent of Darth Vader, who twice breaks into a top-secret facility where he is being held,” Leia said, tapping her finger against her cheek in mock-thought. “It doesn’t take a _doctor_ to think of what you might have been planning to do.”

               “You’d be surprised—”

               “—perhaps you are unaware of just how popular Darth Vader is among a jury of your peers, but I assure you, he inspires just as much hate and fear now as he did at the height of his blood-soaked reign. They will put you in jail for a ten lifetimes before they give you the chance to set him loose upon the Galaxy again.”

               “Well, I wasn’t _gonna_ —”

               “Then _talk_ ,” Leia barked, slamming her palms against the table. “What were your intentions when you broke into a top-secret New Republic facility?”

               Aphra sat back in her chair. “Well, your royalness, right now I’m going on this—let’s call it a fact-finding expedition slash personal quest where _I’m_ the one asking questions of myself and the universe, sooo—”

               “You will not enjoy prison,” Leia said, frankly. “The Imperials will not recognize you as one of their own.”

               Aphra shrugged. “Eh. I’m not concerned. See, the thing about me is that I don’t ever stay locked up for very long.”

               Leia arched an eyebrow. “You seem to think your luck will never run dry.”

               “Good luck and good friends—”

               Leia actually laughed in her face. “Friends!” she said, derisively. “You don’t have friends, Doctor Aphra. You have acquaintances, you have mercenaries, you have debtors—not to mention a whole slew of enemies—but you don’t have _friends_. You simply are not capable. You are wholly and totally self-obsessed.” Leia leaned across the table, something fierce and burning in her eyes: “you couldn’t even make it as a Imperial grunt. Do you want to know why? Because even Imps believe in something more than themselves.”

               Aphra whistled in appreciation. “Wow. That is _spooky_.” She shook her head, feigning disbelief:

               “Turns out, you really are just like _him_ —"

               Leia struck her hard across the face. Aphra actually saw stars.  

               “Ow! _Ow!_ There’s no way that’s legal—”

               “The Emergency Powers Act is a travesty of justice,” Leia said, flatly, “but its saving grace is that my actions in this room are very much legal.”

               Aphra rubbed her cheek. “If I say ‘just like dear old dad’, are you gonna slap me again?”

               “Doctor Aphra, you have to understand—I do not care if you rot. Frankly, you deserve it, for not finishing Vader and taking the issue off my plate,” Leia stood, brushing invisible dirt from her robes. “I’ll see both of you die in prison, and that image will keep me warm for many, many years. You'll tell me what you were doing, or I suggest they put in front of the firing squad. That’s the only thing you care about, isn’t it? Your own worthless skin?” Leia paused, as if waiting for an answer.

               Aphra didn’t oblige.

               “You’ll talk to save yourself,” Leia assured her. “You always do.” She turned, pausing at the door: 

               “Until then, Doctor.”

* * *

 

               Leia paused at the end of the hallway, rubbing her temples. She’d let Aphra get to her. She insisted on doing things herself, and she let her own insecurities get in the way.

               Stupid. Stupid. Selfish—just as selfish as she’d accused Aphra of being.

               A wave of nausea roiled through her, and she put her hand on her belly. “I know,” she said, softly. “I know. I swore I’d never do that again, and here I am …”

               _Just like dear old dad_ —

               Leia gripped the doorframe. She wasn’t about to let scum-for-hire like Aphra get under her skin. She was _nothing_ like Vader.

               “And neither are you, little one,” she whispered, a hand on her middle.

* * *

 

               Only hours later, Aphra got the pleasure of meeting the other Skywalker twin.

               “I should have known you two were a double act,” she said, breezily. “When you slap me, can you get the other side? Even it out a little bit.”

               Skywalker looked at her with a carefully neutral expression. “She hit you?” he asked, and his voice was clearly unhappy.

               “Well, she’s not the first.”

               “I will speak to her,” he said. “That’s something I can do for you.”

               Aphra caught on. “You want me to do something for you in exchange.”

               “It would be nice.”

               “The Galaxy doesn’t run on _nice_.”

               “It could,” Luke offered, “if we were brave.”

               Maybe it was just those big eyes of his, but Aphra thought he really might believe it. Wow! What a rube!

               “You didn’t come here so I could snitch on your sister,” Aphra said.

               Luke leaned forward, elbows on the interrogation table. He propped his chin on his hands. “I wanted to hear what you have to say.”

               “Most interrogations are like that.”

               Luke smiled indulgently. “You deflect a lot. People only do that when they’re afraid someone might get close and hurt them.”

               “Yeah, people like your sister.”

               “Mmm,” Luke nodded, “maybe like my sister.”

               “No, I mean very literally—” Aphra stopped short. Luke was still watching her with that cool, knowing stare.

               It was a little creepy.

               “You don’t want to talk about Leia,” he said. “You’re dying to talk about my father.”

               “Trying to talk _to_ him, actually, but people keep interrupting and putting me in jail.”

               “Why?” Luke interrupted.

               “Why what?”

               “Why do you want to talk to him so bad?”

               Aphra didn’t answer. She needed him to sweeten the pot a little first.

               “I’m not really here to interrogate you,” Luke went on. “I’m here because I’m curious. See, you and me are the only people in the Galaxy who want to sit down and have a conversation with my father,” he fixed her with a blue, piercing stare: “two people of trillions…it’s a lonely feeling.”

               “Uh,” Aphra was taken aback. “Sure?”

               “Do you know what my father is doing right now?”

               Aphra shifted, uncomfortably. “No?”

               “He’s agreed to go through with his very first physical therapy session since he woke up. Do you know what made him agree to it?”

               “Uh, no?” she answered again, mystified.

               “I’ll be honest: if he sees you again, he wants to kill you,” Luke sat back in his chair, his hands folded in his lap.

               That, at least, sounded like the Vader she knew. “Well, let him try. He’s zero for two so far.”

               Luke smiled at her, but it was sad. “I’m sorry he tried to hurt you,” he said, softly. “Then and now. My father—” he paused, considering his words. “My father has lived with sickness and injury for a long, long time. I want—more than anything, I want to see him recover.” He leaned forward, forcing her to meet his eyes.

               “—and I think, Doctor Aphra, that you do, too.”

               Aphra was quiet for a long moment. She fumbled with her cuffs a little, pulling away the palm of her glove—to reveal it wasn’t part of her glove at all, but a cleverly disguised, wafer-thin datachip.

               “I chased down some of the old Imperial med records,” she said, without preamble. “Your dad’s stuff was in there, buried under some _outrageous_ levels of encryption. It’s some pretty grim reading. I read you’ve got, too—your doctors can’t move forward on a lot of stuff until they know exactly what went wrong, and how the Empire did a shitty job patching it.” She tossed the chip to the middle of the table.

               “There. First taste is free.”

               Luke picked up the datachip, considering it for a long moment. Then, he broke into a smile—real, and genuine, bright enough to light up the room.

               “Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “I’ll let you know what we learn.”

               He stood, and left the room—taking with him one of Aphra’s best pieces of leverage. Leverage she’d given away totally for free, without soliciting any kind of promise of a reduced sentence or parole—

               “Why did I do that?” she asked aloud to her empty cell.

               Jedi stuff—that had to be it. Somehow, sweet Luke Skywalker could be even spookier than his father.


End file.
